


The Watcher and the Dancer

by likethemaryellencarter



Category: Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Genre: Boarding School, Gen, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 10:26:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethemaryellencarter/pseuds/likethemaryellencarter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Anyway, we walked for a while, and I remembered how nice it is to have a sister you can count on. I'm-- we're-- excited to see you both, just so that we can have two more honorary sisters to have our backs and not force us to practice sewing on buttons."</p><p>A study in sisterhood, between Nancy and Peggy Blackett and Susan and Titty Walker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Watcher and the Dancer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hafl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hafl/gifts).



> Merry Yuletide, Hafl! I couldn't resist the opportunity to write about the sisterly dynamics that have always been at play in the Swallows and Amazons series with both the Blackett sisters and the two elder Walker sisters, and your wonderful prompt certainly gave me free reign to do. 
> 
> The title is a quote from Louis Glück ("Of two sisters, one is always the dancer, one the watcher"), which I think nicely encapsulates both relationships in different ways. I've always loved how Ransome didn't write off sister-sister interactions as being fueled by jealousies or pettiness, the way they're dismissed in a lot of media, but did write them as unique to the participants and susceptible in the best of ways to flux. The distinctions between the watcher and the dancer is a bit easier to make with the Blacketts, I think, but the basic idea of the statement works.
> 
> Anyway! Have a wonderful holiday season, and let me know what you think. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to write this!

Nancy Blackett was not made for school uniforms. Hot, itching, confining skirts and tunics and that one god-awful dress (to be worn specifically in chapel and one of the circles of hell) not only made it difficult to run (or, rather, more difficult to run than the sharp eyes of the nuns already made it), but completely ruled out all forms of climbing, and made her feel more of a Ruth than any narrow-eyed Aunt's tongue clicking could.  


She stood in front of the mirror, pulling down her skirt and tightening her blazer closer in around her waist. Her hair could stand to go another day or two unbrushed-- Anne Brady down the hall had offered to cut it in a bob for her, and she was considering allowing her to do it. Anne was pretty and put-together and probably wouldn't last a day on Wild Cat Island, but she was good with scissors, and the Great Aunt could stand with a bit of a shock the next time she came to visit on holiday, to say nothing of the relative ease it would finally give Nancy. Wouldn't John be happy when his fellow Captain could finally see, for once, without strands of blonde hair flying in front of her face whenever the wind changed unexpectedly.  


“Nancy, Ruth, I mean, come on.” Peggy appeared in the doorway, already coiffed and ready. They still had another twenty minutes before Nancy would even consider clattering down the steps and over to her first French class of the day, but Peggy had taken to appearing on time for things in her old age (they had celebrated her fifteenth birthday with much pomp and circumstance, Susan and Titty sending up a joint present of a party dress embroidered with very tiny skulls-and-crossbones, just indiscernible to the pointed eye of a matron, and Nancy decorating Peggy's dorm room with signal flags, streamers, and one giant Jolly Roger stolen from the drama department).  


“Shiver my timbers-- fine, for heaven's sake-- sit down, Peg. We've a bit of time.”  


Peggy sat down on Nancy's bed, kicking her feet up on the bed covers and pulling a box of licorice out of her sweater pocket, then offering it to Nancy, who grinned. Peggy was picking things up from Susan about Preparedness and Captain Maintenance. According to John's letter from a few months ago, his sister had packed him off to school with a basket full of food “which I haven't even begun to be able to get through, Nancy, I've had to hide it in my armoire since it's going to last Roger and I until at least winter hols, at the very earliest.”  


Which reminded Nancy. “Have you heard from the Swallows recently? Are they coming up for Christmas?”  


“Here.” Peggy dug around in her pockets again, removing a ball of seine twine, a small dictionary, and her knife before getting to the letter. She spread it out on the bedspread, smoothing out the creases and unbending the corners, and began to read.  


_Dear Peggy,  
_

 _Susan and I are both doing quite well (Susan told me to write that first, both because it's the polite way to begin a letter and because if I hadn't, we know you both would worry about us for the rest of the paragraph. Dastardly pirates my foot). Neither one of us has gotten a letter from Roger for the past month, but in John's latest, he reassured us that Roge was being his typical self and has been spending his time poking around a steam engine kept in a part of their school's cellars. We're not sure what that engine is doing in the cellar, but then, you know, boys and their ways.  
_

_We're very glad you enjoyed your dress! Susan tells me to tell you that she'll show you the stitching when we see you in a few weeks (oh, right, yes, fine Susan, I'll talk about logistics in the next paragraph), Peggy, which I'm sure will be very exciting for us all. I want to show Captain Nancy a knot I figured out how to tie from an illustration on my copy of Treasure Island. I'm not sure what the knot is used for, but I suppose if anyone would know, it would be either one of the Captains.  
_

_Luckily, both Captains will be in the same place jolly soon! Mother tried to keep it secret, but, well, I don't know if you've ever tried to keep Susan out of some grand plan, but she's devilishly good at nosing things out. Mother cracked after five minutes of casual interrogation (well, and a bite of Susan's new bakery), and she told us that we're to be in the Lakes for all of the winter holidays. There was initially some rumblings about mother and Bridgie staying as well, but after much discussion and many letters flying between here and there, they're going to go visit Father in Belgium and come up to see us all only on Christmas Eve and the day itself.  
_

_It's gotten ridiculously cold these past weeks, and so Susan and I have taken to knitting. Or, rather, Susan took to knitting, and then showed me all the useful things I could potentially do with the knitted things (like the net I made, which hangs under my bed and in which I store all variety of useful objects), and so now we both spend the nights knitting._  


Titty kicked her legs out straight, disrupting the blanket of pine needles she had been sitting on beneath the row of evergreen next to the hockey pitch, writing to Peggy (and by extension Nancy, because if there was one thing the Amazons were good at, among all of their other marvelous skills, it was miraculous intersister communication. Even she and Susan weren't able to reach their level. Susan had become cagey recently. It wasn't like she was hiding one thing in particular, exactly, but more like she thought herself much older than Titty, and unwilling to reveal anything overmuch to the younger one, for fear of. Something. What, Titty didn't know, but conversations with Susan had started to take on the tone of walking into a parlor full of adult relatives who stop in the middle of a sentence when they see you, and switch tacks immediately, exchanging fond and condescending looks with each other). Titty was bored. Not in the way Roger was, at school, the kind of boyish boredom that ends up with everyone smudged with diesel fuel and stammering out stories to the headmaster, but a more existential tiredness, stuck at school with no Amazons and no boats and hardly even any running and wild water to speak of. She had floated some paper boats in the small stream that ran by their dormitory yesterday, but without Captain Nancy barking orders and hemp rope under calluses, it just didn't feel right.  


A ringing bell startled Titty all the way upright and reminded her of the growling in her stomach. She crawled under the boughs and out of her cave, setting off towards the canteen.  


“Titty! Wait!” She stopped a few steps outside the hall and turned away, seeing Susan coming towards her. “What's that you have in your hand?”  


Titty looked down at the half-finished, half-forgotten letter to Peggy and held it out towards her sister. “I'm writing to the Amazons. Is there anything you want to say?”  


“Oh! Yes.” Susan began to list off the logistics of the coming meeting and adventure in the north over winter holidays, just as Titty had known she would. Titty nodded along, making a vague note in the back of her mind of shopping lists and tents and very warm sweaters, make sure you write that down! She and Susan walked inside, and as they sat down at their table, Susan trailed off. Titty looked up to see her sister staring at her with an odd expression on her face. Susan was a beautiful young woman, and a concerned look from her seemed to carry with it all maternal and feminine concern that the great poets had ever written about, except that the great poets had never been on the receiving ends of one of these looks, apparently, because they all failed to include stanzas about the vague squirming and guilty feeling you got at having caused such worry.  


“You're excited to go be with the Amazons, aren't you, Titty?”  


Susan had noticed, then, the horrible boredom and restriction of French verbs and algebra and kilts and field hockey sticks. She was smart, perceptive, and so of course she knew. Titty heaved a great sigh, looking furtively around at the other girls sitting at their table.  


“I just wish I were a boy. Roger gets to have such jolly adventures off at his school, and John is treated like an adult and respected. Why do we have to wait until the holidays to have fun? I feel trapped, Susan.”  


Susan sighed and put her arm around Titty. “Do you want to know something?”  


Titty nodded.  


“I do too. I hate this! I'm horribly bored! Do you know how many times we had to rehearse the waltz yesterday? I don't want to tell you. I couldn't inflict that on anyone else. I don't want to practice making preserves, Titty. I've known how to do that for years.”  


Titty laughed, a startled laugh at the reminder that her sister wasn't necessarily what she seemed when Titty was bitterly angry at the injustice of it all. Susan was capable, and Susan was strong, and Susan wasn't some vague reminder of all the domesticity that Titty would never be able to accomplish.  


_So we slunk out of the dining hall, just as soon as we had gulped some lunch and listened to the headmistress remind us all that proper young ladies never imbibe or keep private company with young gentlemen. A laugh, really, given how I don't ever plan to keep private company with young gentlemen, and how insistent she is that we're all proper young ladies. Even Susan isn't, I know now, a proper young lady, and if she can't do that, how unattainable for the rest of us! You might be able to put on a good show, too, Peg, but it's really just a way to make us all feel sad and guilty over how much we'd prefer to be on a ship, or camping on an island, or reading in a garret, or writing poetry, or pouring dangerous chemicals into glassware, or generally not securing appropriate husbands.  
_

_We walked past the little hideout where I wrote the beginning of this letter and down to the road past the sheep field. Neither one of us had classes scheduled for the rest of the day, I because the French teacher is ill (although personally I think a stuffed nose could only improve one's accent) and Susan because she's past all of the mathematics courses they offer here, as she told me during our walk that afternoon, and so allowed to teach herself from the works of the past centuries' greats. I was flabbergasted, at first, but then I remembered her ease with reckoning up costs of expeditions and always keeping supplies at just the right level, and I supposed it made sense that she really was brilliant at maths._  


_Anyway, we walked for a while, and I remembered how nice it is to have a sister you can count on. I'm-- we're-- excited to see you both, just so that we can have two more honorary sisters to have our backs and not force us to practice sewing on buttons. I'm sure Bridgie is excited to see the Amazons, and I'm sure as well that she's much older and more mature than she was when we last saw her. A real person, now!  
_

_We'll see you all quite soon.  
_

_Love,  
_

_Titty Walker, Able-Seaman  
_

_(and Susan Walker, Chief Mate)  
_

Peggy folded the letter closed, smiling down on Titty's illustrations on the outside, alike the messages in code Nancy had sent them while she was laid up during winter holidays a few years ago. Nancy had sat down at her desk, spinning a pen between her fingers and staring at the wall. She tapped the pen a few times against her chin and smiled slowly.  


“Titty's a good sort, isn't she? Susan too, of course. I'll be glad to see them, what is it, a week from now? However am I going to get through this days, Peg? If I have to sing another carol quietly I'll die. Carols should be boomed.”  


Peggy stood up and glanced at her watch, her eyes widening (comically, from Nancy's angle). “Nancy! We'll be spending the next few days with bread and water if we don't hurry!”  


They clattered out of the room and down the steps towards their classrooms. One hundred miles away, two more sisters were doing the same.


End file.
